Ideal Existence
by spiderviveka
Summary: Some disturbing moments of the lives of several Starfleet officers. Life in the Federation is not all it's cracked up to be. Rated M for Violence, cannibalism, and sexual abuse so far. Likely even more taboos to be broken as I go on.
1. Love and Duty

He slips out of the bed onto his knees, blindly groping for his pants and underwear. His glasses are somewhere on the nightstand, but he knows that even if he was wearing them, he wouldn't't be able to see anything. The room was pitch black, save the ever flashing, dim blue-red lights of the communication console. He pulls on his pants like some kind of death skin and feels for his boots under the bed, his shoulder blades and spine protruding from his back like pale glaciers, reflecting the periodic flashing of the lights. He grabs the leather boots and manages to drag onto his foot, sans a sock. Of course the leather, like everything else in the world, is artificial. Replicated from blank matter, just like virtually everything he touched.

At that moment, he doesn't't care to try to find his shirt, but only to try to get out of the apartment and back to his dormitory unheard and unseen. He has a test in warp theory a few hours and only cares to get some sleep. He almost reaches the door when he feels a strong, cold hand on his shoulder. The hand spins him around and pulls him closer, its owner kisses him deeply with putrid, alcohol drenched breath. "Now Mr. Sharpp" says the deep, christine and breathless voice " You know you can't outwit a betazoid, so do you actually think you can leave without kissing be goodbye?"

The boy twitches under the pressure of the hand, wanting to desperately to break free. "Sir..." he gasps for air, trying to hold back his impulse to fight, to run, to do anything but just stand there. It was a constant struggle. "Admiral Thiar... p-p-please, I need to go. I have cl-class in a few hours."

Milo's voice is meed and somewhat squeaky. For a moment he seriously considers biting the arm holding him against the wall. "You know what I like about you, Milo? You're completely terrified of me. So I know that no matter what I tell you to do, you'll do it. And no matter what I do to you, you will never tell anyone."

Milo can feel Thiar grab his wrist and place his hand on his genitals. He winces with disgust at the sensation as he is pushed onto the ground to his knees. "You better do what I say if you want to stay in Starfleet, cadet." the admiral snickers out loud. "I have enough information to have you locked up in a sanitarium for good, so get to it!"

Milo closes his eyes and tries to pretend he is elsewhere, he wonders how he even got himself into this to begin with. He seems to remember it having something to do with his mental breakdown. The good admiral was so "kind" as to become his mentor. Some job he was doing, as the cadet chokes back the rancid taste of flesh and the flood of memories from his childhood. The only difference between Thiar and Milo's own dear step father, was that the admiral had the foresight not to leave and physical marks. Not that anyone would notice, cadet Sharpp was covered in scars from electrical wires, hair brushes, and anything else handy. No one would know the difference.

Somewhere in the bowels of Starfleet Medical Headquarters, a young android, Doctor Lennox, pushes a body to the morgue for autopsy, his footsteps echoing through the silent corridors of the building, miles under the ground. After what seems like hours of pushing around the corpse, he reaches the door of the main morgue. The lights are dimmed and the room just as silent as the corridors leading to it. He transfers the corpse on the stretcher to a stasis shelf. It is a young Vulcan girl, no older than fifteen, her throat is slashed back to her spine. She has severe lacerations on her breasts and stomach. She is cut from her sternum to pubic bone, her entrails seemingly missing. As Lennox goes to close the stasis unit, he notices that her dead, mahogany eyes are focused on him. They are clouded over with a grayish film and are as still as stones. He shakes off the surge of electricity that runs down has spine and closes her into the unit. He turns and finds himself nose to nose with the human medical examiner, Dr. Stein. Her smile is warm and gracious as she greets the android.

"New body?" she inquires, studying the outline of the stasis unit door. "Yes sir," he says "I need to pick up the tissue samples for patient Kerish Haas. Are they ready yet?" He looks up at the doctor with a dumb expression. "Who?"

"Kerish Haas, the Bajoran girl? She died of head trauma from a shuttle accident, it was under suspicious circumstances."

"Oh... I believe that she was disposed of already."

"What! We haven't finished the toxicology reports yet! You don't seem to certain... perhaps I should check myself."

Lennox makes his way to the autopsy room, Dr. Stein right behind him. "Listen! You really shouldn't't go in there!" The android pushes his way through anyway and is stopped dead in his tracks as he looks straight ahead. Four guilty, blood soaked faces look up after him. All of them are doctors and technicians who work in the morgue, they are sitting around an autopsy table, in the center of which, lies what is undoubtedly the corpse of Kerish Haas. Skin is stripped from her body and her flesh is dangling from the hands and mouths of the vultures seated around her. Lennox is shocked and backs into a wall. He is not sure how to react exactly, but he knows that cannibalism is definitely considered a taboo, as well as a crime.

"What are you doing!" he exclaims in a fit of confusion and shock "You are eating the damned evidence! That is someones daughter! A murder victim, and you are eating her! This is sick!"

"No Dr. Lennox," Stein tries to explain "You just don't understand." He turns around to object but Stein happens to know where his deactivation switch is. She reaches behind his left ear and slides the small plate into place. "So" she says, standing over the unconscious android. "Anyone here know anything about cybernetics?"


	2. Knife Man

Ivy Wheeler kicks the dirt and leaves as the walks through the barely lit back alleys of San Francisco. Sometimes she hits a wet spot from the rain or blood or beer or something else and is glad that her boots are black leather and rubber. She could have just transported back to her apartment, but she prefers the walk. She usually loves walking with Anthony, but tonight he is just droning on and on about nothing. A gray cat crosses their path and she reaches down to pet the animal, it hisses and tries to bite her so she jumps out of its way. Anthony laughs and they keep going. She hopes that Crawford won't be there when she gets home, he rarely is since he started working in New Dresden. She used to be very in love with him too, but his work was more important. Because she was a menial Starfleet science officer and he was a professor, if you want the glamor and prestige you have to make the sacrifices. So she brings home her various friends from work and fucks them in his own bed. She doesn't change the sheets either.

Ivy hates walking by old dumpsters and dark corridors. It was amazing how much that part of the city was unchanged from the times of the eugenics wars, how unsanitary everything was. Anthony's voice buzzes on and on about quantum singularities and this and that, but warp theory was not her area of study. She was a botanist through and through, but by this time, even discussing carnivorous plants would bore her to tears. As they are passing an old abandoned building, Ivy feels herself being tackled. There are three strange men with phasers and knives and black cotton masks. She grab Anthony who tries to run away and they drag the two of them into the building.

One of the men with a stench of opium and sweat gives Ivy a sharp kick to the back of the head and she slips out of consciousness. She awakens groggy with her clothes cut off and her wrists tied to a metal pipe. The room is dimly lit from the lights outside, across the floor Anthony is screaming in a puddle of blood. One of the hooded figures takes out a knife from a holster at his waist and runs the blade against the intended victims cocoa colored skin and he cries out. "Please don't hurt me!" he begs "Please!" and the hooded figure just shoves the blade in between his ribs. He hisses and cries as he feels metal sinking into his lung. He thrashes around and still tries to get to his feet. The other two men hold him as the knife man removes the blade and jabs it into the Anthony's abdomen, right under his sternum. The hooded figure pulls the blade down toward the victims groin as they all laugh wildly. Anthony just cries out and gurgles blood. Sick and red and sweet and metallic, frothing and bubbling from his nose and lips. His intestines spill out into the floor and his eyes move down to them. He manages to scratch out one last word. "Don't..."

They turn toward where Ivy is, naked and freezing. Knife man runs the blade up her inner thigh and she kicks his hand. "You cunt!" his nondescript voice rings out. "You're going to pay for that! Hold her head!" The other two men held her head still while knife man grinned grotesquely from behind black fabric. "How do you like being fucked with steel, girly?". He traces around her eye teasingly with the blade and she quivers and tries hard to be strong, tries hard not to cry. Suddenly he jabs the blade into her eye all the way to the back of the socket. Blood spurts and it takes her a few seconds to even feel it. She screams out in pain and tries to break free. He scrapes the remnants of the eye out and flings it to the floor. Ivy's optic nerve dangles out and the can hardly breathe from the shock. She looses consciousness to the feeling of the men pushing against the insides of her legs. She does care at this point and just hopes for death.

Lennox wakes up in pitch darkness, his vision immediately adjusts to the conditions and he can see that he is in a storage room. His short, dark hair unusually disheveled and the last thing that he can remember is walking to the morgue with a body. He feels strange, the android equivalent of grogginess and a sort of electric stinging in his temples. He stands up and walks into the blinding hallway as he taps his com badge. "Lennox to Dr. Stein, this may seem like a strange question, but did I deliver that body?"

"Yes" the knowing, serene voice answers back, praying that he doesn't look to far into the incident. "Is everything alright there, Mr. Lennox?"

"I do not know, I have one hour, ten minutes, twenty three point five seconds missing from my memory. Perhaps I just blacked out. I will run a diagnostic promptly."

The willowy, thin android stands by the wall for a moment trying to orient himself. His pale skin and paler blue eyes are drowned by the fluorescent lighting. His face looks gaunt and hollow, shadows over-accentuation his Nordic features. He turns to walk to the nurses station when a stretcher and its accompanying team of wolves whirs by him with a fresh patient. "We need you in trauma room 6, doctor!" a womans voice rings out. Lennox follows an Andorian nurse into the room and begins to assess the patient. Its a young woman, maybe twenty years old. She is human, of African descent, with curly black hair tied behind her head and makeup and blood smeared across her face. She is naked an bleeding. Her left breast has been severed, leaving a gaping, fatty crater in her chest. Her eye has been inoculated and and there is a large wound to the back of her head, an apparent skull fracture. There are numerous other lacerations, contusions and other signs of mutilation across her body. Sexual assault is also evident, but this woman wasn't just assaulted, she was tortured. "Who found her?" the android asks as he begins to treat her for shock. "Security patrol" a medic answers with a sick smirk "Some abandoned building, they also found a fresh corpse."

"Nurse, this woman needs a blood transfusion. Dr. Katz, Nurse Tala, start working on those wounds." The android speaks like a general, commanding his troops, leading them into battle. The victims is kept comatose during the procedures to save her life and bodily integrity. The remaining eye is motionless behind its fleshy covering, things are hit and miss for a while and she doesn't notice it. Her vital signs are stable and fluttering, rabid wings through smoke and dust. But the doctors keep her living, despite the small fact that if most of them were in her position, suicide would be a real option. But the beauty of implied consent is that the patient has no say. So they piece her head back together like an ugly, bony puzzle and heal the masses of twisted wounds across her body. A nurse swabs her for semen or blood or any other kind of identifying material from the assailants.


	3. Red Leaves

The Streets leading between the Admiral's apartment and Milo Sharpp's dormitory glow pink with the rising sun. San Francisco never sleeps and neither does he, he runs wearing his underwear, boots, and glasses, his skin pale and glowing in the cold fall air. People on the streets, going to and from shops and bars and work and home, all of them talking, busy. A few stare at the boy as he runs past but just ignore him. Its none on their business and its best not to get involved. Milo is only about five feet three inches and one hundred pounds. He barely can pass his self defense courses, god forbid actually fight. But running is something he has always been good at. When he was younger he lived in what had once been a lunar science station, just him, his sister, mother and step father. Well the man who lived with them had a horrific temper and he got lots of practice running through the endless corridors of the complex. It was run or be beaten, run or be strangled, run or be raped, run or have cigars put out in your skin. So he always had a good incentive to be the fastest. But there were only so many places to run to, and he always eventually got caught. Still, the longer it could be postponed the better.

So Milo runs through the streets of San Francisco. He knows that the only reason this all keeps happening is because Thiar feeds on his insecurities, his fears, his memories. He had hoped his life would be better once he joined Starfleet, and for a while it was. That is, until he was caught cheating. Thiar cut a deal with him to let him stay in school. Milo had to provide him with certain services and he could continue his classes as planned. Things spiraled downward from there. The more time Milo spent in the betazoid's office, the more Thiar learned of this troubled pupil. He couldn't report him to anyone because the telepath always monitored his thoughts, not that they'd believe him. Things like this simply didn't happen on earth.

Milo runs with his eyes clothes, letting the cold air cleanse him. He knows the streets every detail by heart and doesn't need his vision. The lenses of his glasses are fogged and dirty anyway. His movement is suddenly restricted as he hits an object. Its warm and soft, covered in fabric and all stretched over bone. He opens his eyes and looks up at the spindly Vulcan woman standing in his path. She is a good head taller than him and backs away slightly, staring with dark green black eyes.

"Are you alright young man?" her voice is smooth and monotonous. She looks no older than thirty, but could easily be three times that and Sharpp backs away from her, startled. "I- I'm s-s-sorry, m-ma'am." The Vulcan is silent for a moment and looks the human up and down. "Is everything alright? It is cold and you are poorly dressed. Have you been injured in some way?" He just gulps and tries to think of a response but nothing comes to mind. "N-n-no... I'm f-f-fine, really."

"Then, I suggest that you look where you are running next time." She turns and leaves, Milo blinks and she has vanished from his sight. He decides to heed her advice and keeps running back to his dorm. Its too late for him to sleep, but he still has time for a shower and a change of clothes.

An eye drags open, staring at the ceiling. Ivy feel's nothing but a sick numbness. Her breathing is sluggish and she barely can move her fingertips. Where was she? Was this the afterlife, or had knife man and the others taken her somewhere new for yet another round of pain and blood loss? She feels her jaw go slack, so she takes in a deep breath and screams with all her might. Soon a man appears above her, his face is blurry and the light above him shines down like some sick halo. "Can you hear me, miss?" the androids voice rings out, smooths and professional. She tries so hard to move but is too weak "Don't hurt me!" she manages to rasp out. "No one is going to hurt you, miss. You're in a hospital, you're safe now. Can you tell me your name?"

"My name... Ivy. My name is Ivy Wheeler" her voice is frail, "Oh my god... that was all real wasn't it? Am I dead?"

"No, no, you have just been hurt very badly..." Lennox takes her hand and tries to be as reassuring as possible. "We are going to make sure that no one else hurts you, ok Ivy?"

The Klingon on the bottom bunk growls and Milo tries to sneak into the room. He ignores him and stalks into the bathroom where he peels off his pants and boots and climbs into the shower. The fabric pile in the floor leers at him, a reminder of the evenings events and he can't wait to destroy it and put on a clean, new uniform. He still can't stand the feeling of showering without water, though over the years he simply has never been able to get clean. He reflects back on the countless hours spent scrubbing himself with steel wool until he bled. For years he was one walking open wound. But at least the skin was gone, everywhere that_he _had touched him had been scrubbed away. Now he restrains himself from mutilating his body in any way. The last thing he needs is to be sent to a psychiatric facility and to get behind on his schooling. It would just give something else for Thiar to use against him anyway.

He steps out of the shower and promptly wraps a towel around himself as he crouches above a drawer on his side of the dressed to pull out a fresh uniform. When the drawer opens, he is surprised to see a Klingon knife stuck through the top layers of clothing. He pulls out the dagger and examines it, wondering why his roommate, Kash, doesn't just go ahead and kill him and get it over with. He knows that the Klingon hates him and he certainly would not object if he went ahead and decapitated him or what ever ghoulish act the oaf had in mind. He pulls out an undamaged uniform and puts it on. No matter how small a size he selects, he always seems to drown in the gray and teal fabric, the only thing that seems to fit properly is the boots. He stares in the mirror to be greeted by his skeleton reflection and decides to leave. He had to pull a shift in the emergency room after first period, and wasn't looking forward to having to be polite to people while working at the front desk and cataloging lab specimens. He could already tell that it was going to be a terrible day, but then, what day wasn't? He had no idea how things could possibly get much worse.

He walks out of the door and into the bright, colorfully adorned corridor of the dormitory. The sun was now shining cheerfully through the windows and the wind was blowing red leaves against the glass. He tentatively cleans his glasses as he walks down the stairwell and out of the door. The day is brisk and sunny, the cool wind whispering through the trees. Across the campus he can see people walking their pets and schoolgirls in skirts and tights cutting across the commons area to the nearby primary school. Their hair in braids as they laugh in a language he can't understand. And for a moment, it seems that there is a whole universe out there, where people don't live in mortal fear. Where families love each other and children grow up to be successful, contributing members of society, where they can be happy and content without escaping to some illusive, drug induced fantasy. For a moment he feels like he is one of them. But then the wind starts to blow and clouds gather on the horizon. He hastens his step as he walks to the science building, praying to the gods of gravity that he doesn't slip in one of the sludgy puddles of mud and leaves on the way.


	4. Behind Closed Doors

Admiral Thiar awakes from a deep and stirring slumber to a familiar presence and an audible "click", He feels a cold, circular pipe pressed to his temple and his eyes snap open, only to trace the outline of a black figure standing above him.

"Milo! What the hell are you doing!"

Milo grins and Thiar knows it despite the pitch blackness of the room.

"Y-you know d-d-damn well! D-d-do you know what th-this is against y-your head? A Luger P08 pistol... an ancient earth w-w-weapon. And unless you d-do exactly as I s-s-say... I w-will blow a hole st-str-straight through your h-head."

"Put that thing down Milo, someone might get hurt."

"Don't t-t-tempt me! Now get out of th-th-the b-bed and on your kn-n-ees, I want you to beg me for m-m-mercy."

Thiar gets out of his bed and on his knees as he is told, he can tell that Milo Sharpp is quite intent on what he said. But never in Thiar's life has he begged for anything.

"I said b-b-beg!"

_One day earlier..._

"How did your test go, Mr. Sharpp?"

The androids voice was as clear and calm as ever as he smiled down at the slight young cadet. Milo tries his best not to seem utterly terrified and fails miserably at the task. He hates working at the hospital, but Dr. Lennox had somehow managed to talk him into it.

"I th-th-think i f-failed."

"Oh... well, better luck next time, as they say. You need to take neuropeptide readings today from all of the patients on this wing. The correct equipment is in storage room Alpha-7."

Sharpp nods silently and walks to the storage area. The hall is covered in doorways, each leading to a different storage room. The artificial sunlight bleeds all of the color from the walls, leaving it all in strangled, dead shades of gray. He finds the way to room Alpha-7 and enters, the door whispering open at his feet. The lights are already on as he walks in, the walls are catacombed with shelves and ancient paper files. There is an adjoining office which is obscured behind a window. The glass is set to opaque and the door to the office is locked. Milo hears voices from the inside and quietly punches in the code to make the window opaque on one side only, their side. He manages to learn a lot of things this way about the hospital administration, but is shocked by whats behind the glass today.

The room is set up much like a makeshift morgue with pale blue light and walls so white they appeared to be composed of the bones of slaughtered angels. Dr. Stein and her younger brother, a nurse at the hospital, embrace each other, filthy naked and beaming red, smeared with blood. There is a corpse on the porcelain slab that has been severed at its joints, a male human with bright bright, glassy eyes, staring at Milo through the dead glass. Stein feeds her brother a piece of carved away flesh as he begins to lick down her body and between her thighs, biting at her pale, bloodied skin the entire way down. Milo watches frozen in disgust as Stein takes an old style surgical scalpel with a steel blade and begins slashing at her brothers back with it as he buries his face in her. Blood gushes from his skin and Stein cackles, every spike of laughter echoing madly from the walls. She licks the blood from her lips as she stares through the glass into Milo's eyes. She can't see him but she knows that there is a voyeur in their midst.

Milo starts running backward, knocking over a tray of petri dishes before running right out the door, pausing only long enough to notice that it was marked Alpha-6. He starts running again, his feet flailing, trying to cover enough ground to carry him far far away from what he hoped was just a very sick hallucination. His eyes are closed and the air is cool as is rushes over his face and through his uniform, when suddenly he feels a familiar hand grasping his shoulder and stopping him dead in his tracks and his legs give way under him. He opens his eyes to see Admiral Thiar smiling at him, that disgusting, plastic grin and almost certainly painted pink lips stretched over shards of shrapnel that he masquerades as teeth. His breath is always possesses a metallic sweetness to it, his red, glistening tongue runs over his teeth.

"What are you running from, cadet?"

Milo didn't know why he bothered asking a question that he already knew the answer to. The Betazoid's grip only tightens and Milo's pupils turn into deep, waterless wells despite the harsh lighting. He doesn't have time for this. He has work to do, and he wishes that the Admiral would stop coming to visit him at the hospital. "Why me?" he wonders, avoiding eye contact with the endlessly tall betazoid with the grayish hair and round, teddy bear face. Without words the admiral starts walking, never for a moment letting go of the hostage forever in his grasp. They walk through hallways and for what seems like an eternity before reaching a long row of administrative offices. Thiar leads Sharpp through the door of the third office and sits him down in a dark, cushioned velvet chair, before turning the lights on.

A small girl sits in the chair beside him, no older than seven. She wears only white panties and her flowing brown hair drapes over her shoulders and back. There is a red cloth gag in her mouth but she doesn't struggle. Her black betazoid eyes focus in on the terrified cadet. Her ankles and wrists are bound with nylon rope in front of her and Milo just stares, refusing to meet the stare of Aret Thiar. He feels the man take his hand and place an object in it. Cool, smooth and metallic, lest than a millimeter wide. A knife of some kind, a scalpel? He looks down, and it looks almost identical to the outdated little blade used by Dr. Stein earlier. He looks at the object and then back up at the little girl and back again. Thiar sits down in a chair across from the two of them, grinning. A truly, sick individual.

"Computer, lock doors. Now, I would like you to meet my daughter, Luna. Luna, this is my favorite student, Milo Sharpp. Now, Milo, you have a scalpel in your hand and a beautiful, naked little girly sitting next to you. I want you to cut her... start at her nipples."

"No!"

"That wasn't a request, it was an order."

"No! Y-y-your sick! I w-w-wont hurt her!"

"Mr. Sharpp! Need I remind you that I have enough evidence to have you expelled from the academy and sent back to Luna!"

"I d-d-don't care! I won't d-d-do it!"

"You're a stuttering fool, Milo. You will suffer for refusing my orders, rest assured."

Thiar forces the blade from Sharpps hand and begins to trace the outline of his daughters chest with the blade, ever so carefully. Halfway down he jabs the blade into her skin, leaving a fatty gaping wound in its wake. The girl cries out in pain but her eyes are dead, completely devoid of emotion. Milo's stomach turns to knots at the shrill sound of her cries and it takes everything in his power not to vomit his intestines all over the floor. His head starts spinning and the lights in the room seem blinding. He covers his face, he wants so badly to help the girl. But he can't, he can't even help himself. He could tell someone about all of this but they would never believe him. He has tried before and was laughed at.

"Get out."

The admirals order is clear and direct and Milo obeys, unable to look at the girl on his way out. He drags himself across the cool plastic wall, trying to keep his balance, trying not to completely lose control of his faculties. He can't finish the days work, not like this. The halls are blue white and glowing, twisting like some massive network of blood vessels through the nondescript building. There are patients in beds and bureaucrats behind desks. All oblivious to the young cadet who can't decide whether his life was truly this disturbing, or if everything that has happened is a simple figment of his imagination. But he feels the pain and bears the scars, he knows that he couldn't be that fortunate. Reality seems to be trickling away like blood from his fingertips and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

When he reaches the desk he tells the shift manager that he isn't feeling well. He tries to make it sound authentic and convinces her not to give him a medical scan. As he leaves the buildings he scans the bushes and makes sure he isn't being followed, not that there is anything he could do about it even if he was. The air is cold, most the people he see's are wearing coats and hats and he is wearing his cadets uniform. He never was a fan of lycra, but unfortunately he had no real need for any other kind of clothing. He stares at his feet as he steps on the wet leaves. It had been raining and was dark now. The sidewalks still sheen with water. A cool, feminine voice calls him from a shadow and he stops in his tracks. Its the Vulcan from that morning. She wears a long cloak and buries her hands in her pockets.

"You seem troubled, young man."

Milo blinks up at her dumbly and just stares, afraid to talk. Afraid to stutter like a fool in front of such a majestic, intelligent being.

"Violence is never the answer, but there are times where one must take actions to protect themselves and others. You should not let him harm you."

Before Milo could respond, she was gone. For the rest of his walk home, her words played over and over in his mind. She was right, he knew that much, but what could he possibly do? It was then that he developed an idea. When he gets back to his room he sits at his computer console and begins extensive research on weaponry. He needs something unusual. Something simple that he could assemble himself without suspicion. He finds a device he likes and begins to replicate the necessary components. Within several hours it is nearly complete and his roommate arrives home, obviously irritated by his presence. The Klingon gives his usual greeting of a snarl and curses under his breath before peering over the humans shoulder with curiosity.

"What have you built this time, patok?"

Milo smiles and looks up at the beastly young man with a new founded sense of pride.

"J-j-just a g-gift f-f-for someone."


	5. To Protect and Serve

The hospital lighting was deafening as Milo squints back into existence. He can tell that his glasses are missing, but thats about it. His legs are numb and his body is warm. He sits up to find him self staring at Lennox who is sitting on the edge of his bed.

"Hello Milo, how do you feel?"

"I... I d-d-don't know. Wh-why am I here?"

"What do you remember before you woke up?"

"I... I r-r-remember being in m-m-my dorm, getting r-ready for b-b-bed."

"Milo... you shot Admiral Thiar."

It all started coming back to him. He had replicated the parts for a primitive earth weapon. That night, when his room mate was sleeping, he crept out of the window and ran all the way to Thiar's apartment. The old bastard lived separately from his wife and daughter who, apparently also live in San Francisco. He shorted out the locking device like a professional. He crept into the apartment silently, he knew ever single weak spot of the floor, every creaking board and every bare patch of carpeting. He put his gun against his head and wanted so much to squeeze the trigger right then and there, but he waited, he made him beg for mercy. He made him get on his hands and knees and cry for forgiveness. And then... then it goes black. Milo's memory is flooded empty with the murky ink of blank time.

"D-d-did he d-die?"

"No, he has recovered. But the medical teams were unsure, at first, how to treat his injuries."

Milo stares at his bare arms. All of his injuries had been healed and he is now clad in the strange while cotton hospital smock. Had he been injured? Why was he in a hospital and not incarcerated?

"Where am I?"

"You are in the Appleby Memorial Psychiatric Facility at Starfleet Medical Headquarters"

"W-w-will I be arrested?"

"No, it was deemed that you committed the crime due to mental instability. And Thiar refused to press charges... You have been in an unresponsive but conscious state for a week, do you remember any of it?"

"N-n-nothing, sir."

Psychiatric facility? How was this possible? Milo barely remembers anything, and the walls around him float in their white plaster milk suspension. The whole plan to shoot Thiar hangs like the putrid fog of some terrible dream. Then again, the past sixteen years of his life seems just as surreal. The android just blinks at him, oblivious to the scope of this whole incident but still trying desperately to be a good, supportive doctor and superior officer.

"I need to ask you a few questions. During your initial physical exam, there were signs of blunt force trauma, sexual assault, and mutilation. To be blunt, what happened to cause these injuries?"

"N-n-nothing."

"Milo, no one will blame you. But if a crime has been committed, we are obligated to report it to the authorities."

"Its n-n-n-nothing... I just g-g-g-got r-r-robbed. Its n-n-no big d-deal."

Ivy looks into the Mirror and screams, despite the wonders of modern medical technology, she was horrifically disfigured. A nurse runs in to the room and pulls her away from the sink and sits her back down on her bed. "We'll fix you." she says, in a tone so sardonic and matter of fact. She looks down at her hands with the blood still dried under her nails. She flails and cries and screams as she rips at her face. There is a crater where her eye once was, gaping mockingly like some strange, sunken flesh grave. She feels the sick sting of a needle in her throat and her screams and gasps turn to a choked, muted gurgling before she sinks into yet another drug induced coma.

The local police commissioner stands in the door to her hospital room with a the nurse. He is a tall, dark human with an even darker beard and bright green eyes like gleaming jewels, juxtapose to his marred face.

"Have you found any leads, sir?" the nurse asks with a stunning air of sincerity.

"No" the mans voice whirs out "And we aren't looking. This seems to be the work of a group of serial killers, possibly cult related. The last Earth and the federation needs right now is more bad publicity. We just managed to get everyone to stop talking about 'the girl butcher' of Providence."

"Publicity? Are you serious? They brutalized this woman and at least five others before her! You have to do something!"

"No, actually, I don't. I am under direct order from Starfleet command to keep this under wraps. If you or any of your colleagues mention this to anyone, nurse, the press in particular, I personally will see to it that you are never heard from again. That's a promise, not a threat."

The nurses jaw drops to her chest as she watches the security chief walk down the infinite corridor until his image turns to a blur and finally disappears. This behavior by the police was nothing new, but somehow, whenever the medical staff gets orders not to disclose such brutal violence, it is never any less shocking. Earth and the United Federation of planets have this reputation of being peaceful and Utopian. But in truth, the whole federation is just as bloody, violent, and dysfunctional as ever, especially Earth. They have just gotten better at hiding it.


	6. Mental Floss

The window in the androids apartment overlooks the harbor as the fog rolls in over the water. The light shining in is a purple gray and he begins to put his research away. On the rare occasion he sleeps, he does it in a chair or on the floor. The idea of a bed is far too reminiscent of the operating tables at the interment camp. The scientists who had created him had such high hopes for his potential. They gave him the ability to feel pain and other sensations because they felt it would help him to assimilate into the organic world. But in the end, it only aided in his torture. They created him so that he would possess emotion, but the Cardassians only used it as a weapon. So many years ago, he had known the fair haired Bajoran girl named Taya. They were prisoners in the same camp. She was no older than fifteen and always managed to smile, no matter what happened.

She was a fool, at least he thinks so now, retrospectively. She fell in love with him, where as the others avoided him like the plague. Everyone who got close to Lennox disappeared and never came back. This was true for his creators who were slaughtered at the Phiana Orphanage Massacre. Lennox was helping them deliver medical supplies when the Cardassians attacked. They raped and killed all the women first as they made the men and boys watch, but no one survived, with the exception of the android. He was a thing of curiosity to Gul Daro, the woman leading the attack. He was captured and studied for years, never willfully giving them information.

So they tried and tried, through every means possible to break down his barriers. Their engineers barely could maintain their own ships, none the less dissect a complex piece of equipment like a positronic brain. Torture failed, he even stopped screaming before too long. They will simulate excruciating pain to the point where his body would automatically shut off, which was always quite ineffective. They managed at some point, to gain control of his voluntary movement systems. They forced him to kill children for hopes that he would finally disclose Federation and Marquis secrets, that he would assist their engineers to build combat ready androids, but he never broke.

And such was the fate of Taya. She was pregnant when she was killed, she had been gang raped by several of the internment camp guards. She told him never to give in to the Cardassians, even if it meant her life, and he did not. But that sense of morality has never been able to wash away the blood from his hands. Whether he was being remotely controlled or not, he still killed them. Their screams and agonized, twisted faces haunt him. He had spent ten years of his life as a test subject in a laboratory, and even now that he is free, he forces himself to spend most of his life catering to patients and analyzing test cultures. Trying desperately to free himself of some of the guilt, to make retribution for the lives he has spent in the name of morals. The sacrifice of the few for the need of the many, in theory is quite logical, always seems to feel wrong in the end.

He combs his hair in the mirror, just like a real human. He has synthetic bones and muscle, fat and blood and skin. Synthetic hair follicles and tear ducts, pores and lungs. An artificial heart, digestive system, automated reflexes and cognitive patterns. Microcomputers regulate his body functions, a constant skin temperature and respiratory rates, everything streamlined and perfect in design and construction. His eyes are a pale, hollow blue and stare back at him vacantly before he turns out the lights. He takes his white coat from the hook by the door and puts it over his medical smock. The room is tiny, lined with brick walls, a chair by the factory window staring out over the bay. The day looks cold and bitter, but wasn't every day? Even as the sun shines through the window, he knows that it is artificially regulated by the planet's weather control system.

He disappears through the door, his white coat trailing behind him as he climbs down the steps and walks toward the hospital. There is a pile of crates by the side of a building, and he can hear a faint mewing and labored breathing. He stops and digs into the pile of rotting wood and paper to find a tiny, moist bundle of fur. He picks up the creature and holds it to the light. It's barely alive and covered in blood. Burns on his face and abdomen, it looks like it has been tortured. he cradles it to his chest and smiles gently.

"It is alright, you are safe now."

The food in the plate in front of Milo resembles some kind of ground pig intestines, but with a strange, bluish tinge. He can't force himself to eat it, or even look at it, so he shoves it to the side before finishing his glass of cranberry juice. There is a woman in front of him who is horrifically disfigured. Her eye appears to have been gouged out and she rocks back and forth, humming "The Yellow Rose of Texas". Drool runs down her face and her one eye is fixed onto a blank area of the table. All of the patients in the dayroom seem to be human, with the exception of a Vulcan man who connects imaginary dots on the walls and an Andorian girl who apparently cut off her own antennae, they grow back in vain under pale bandages. Some of the patients are strapped to chairs while others stare catatonically at the floor from the plastic furniture. While others still, talk in hushed voices and laugh quietly.

The dayroom has pink walls and grey carpet. The furniture is all plastic and rounded like doll toys and the nurses stand at their desks like stone immortalized fascists behind a shatterproof partition. There is blood on the wallpaper behind two women who are laughing in Japanese. But the lady sitting across from him at the round, plastic flesh table just rocks and hums and drools. Out of nowhere, a rather obese man in his thirties appears beside Milo and starts eating his food. Not that he cares, he hadn't planned on consuming it anyway.

"W-w-what are you d-doing?"

"Eating... You know what they make this stuff out of, don'tcha?"

"N-no..."

The man slurps the strange substance between his teeth with glee as he prepares to answer his own question.

"Abortus... the womens clinic is on the next floor up. They give the aborted fetuses to the psychiatric ward, Dr. Rollins requests them specially for this ward."

The man's red face wrinkles as he sucks down the last of the food substance, making a loud slurping noise before standing up and releasing one loud, grotesque belch and walking away. Milo stares down at the empty plate and wonders if there was any truth to what he said. He stands up to dispose of the dish in the slot at the far end of the room. He can't help but stagger as he walks from the table. An orderly grabs his shoulder and tells him to sit down.

"I j-j-just w-w-want t-o p-p-p-"

"Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down!"

Milo spins around to see a Klingon woman about three times his size. "Great" he thinks, "This is just what I need, another Klingon." He only has a brief moment to contemplate why he seems to be the bane of every Klingons existence before he jabbed in the stomach and shocked with an electrical baton. He drops the dish as he hits the floor and quivers as an excruciating burst of electricity surges through his body. at some point he is carried to a wheel chair and stepped into place. There are metal cuffs holding down his wrists and ankles. His head spins as his eyes attempt to adjust to the light. The rocking woman still sits in her chair, a puddle of saliva pooling on the table in front of her.

Then the room goes quiet as a man enters. He has dark brown hair and light skin, dark eyes and a white linen suit. His body moves fluidly and he grins at the nurses and the patients as he walks in, dripping with some expensive alien cologne and pure arrogance. This must be the Dr. Rollins whom Lennox had told him to expect, the Dr. Rollins who allegedly feeds this patients aborted fetuses. Like most human doctors, he is tall and aesthetically pleasing. Still, there was something artificial about his personality. Something strangely sociopathic, hidden just beneath the surface as he talks to his staff and walks into the locked, metal door behind the nurses station.

Moments later, the doctor appears through the door once again holding a large clipboard with real paper and a graphite pencil. He walks to where Milo is seated, still delirious from the electric shock and whatever they shot him up with when he arrived there.

"Greetings, Mister Sharpp" The doctor reaches out to shake the boy's hand, only to laugh when he can't reciprocate. He straightens his tie as he continues.

"My name is Dr. Rollins, I understand that you are a Starfleet cadet. Shot an admiral, did you? Well, we'll fix whatever's gone wrong in that defective mind of yours, don't worry."

"I d-d-don't think I sh-should be here."

"Is that so? Well you shouldn't go around trying to kill people if you don't want to be rehabilitated. You can trust us Mister Sharpp, we're federation doctors."


End file.
